SOURCE: "Stifter: Granit" in The German Novelle, Princeton University Press, 1977, pp. 133-57.

In the following excerpt, Swales demonstrates the tension between individuality and generality in "Granit" and other works by Stifter.

"Granit," from the Bunte Steine collection, is a Rahmenerzählung, a story with a narrative frame. It begins by describing a granite block that stands in front of the narrator's childhood home. The narrator recalls how one day, while he was sitting on this stone, a trick was played on him by Andreas, the Schmiermann (seller of grease and pitch). The boy allows his feet to be smeared with cart grease—and runs into the house to show his mother. She is furious at the mess he makes on the clean floor; in her anger she refers to him as "unholy and obstinate" and carries him into an outhouse where she...